Listen The Wind is Calling
by Chyme for the Rhyme
Summary: It happens in a flash like it always does. Yusaku points at something and tells you 'no.' And then, you, Ai, end up forced to experience the dreaded déjà vu. The truth is, you don't know the shape of the future, not any more. Not when the past still haunts you. You and Yusaku simply have to listen to each other. {Aiball Week 2020 - February 9th: Past /Future}


It happens in a flash like it always does. Yusaku points at something and tells you 'no.' Or to be more precise, he lifts out some dragon-fruit from the basket you'd just tossed in, casts a rather snooty look at you and says, 'I don't remember you needing to eat.'

And he's not even standing like Lighting, not even holding himself in quite the same regal above-it-all-way (for one thing he isn't_ floating)_ but still, the way he's looking at you makes something rupture in your code, prompting you to bring up the multiple times Lightning looked at you in the exact same way. It was always when you frolicked in fields other Ignis had built and dared to ask him _why_ exactly, he was in such a hurry to churn out all this hard data in the Cyberse World; why couldn't he just _relax _instead. And he would stare at you like Yusaku does now, as though you had dribbled down your shirt, though of course, back then you hadn't been wearing anything at all. _Scandalous_, you know.

'Mmmm, I may not need to eat, but you do!' you tell Yusaku cheerfully enough, raising a finger like a teacher. 'And you may not need this, but you should at least be willing to try it, right? C'mon! It's fresher than those microwavable meals you're content to shovel in like an automaton!'

'I think I have a better idea of what I want to eat than you do.'

Then he frowns, spots the little ball of lettuce you had tactfully been attempting to hide under microwavable meal number _six _and glares at you while you attempt not to wilt under that sharp look.

'Put it back, Ai.'

You glare back.

'So bossy! Just like Lightning!' you comment, as you scoop the lettuce up and flounce back to the shelf with it. 'He pretended he was above it all too, but if you got him too mad, like you, – and well, you _saw_ he was – he got all vicious, barking at us like he though we were a bunch of soldiers. Huh! Slave-drivers the both of you!'

Truthfully you're not sure why you do this, why you sometimes fire out these strange sentences like missiles. It's strange; all your memories are like video files, you can arrange them how you want, even rename them, and yet sometimes, just the way Yusaku might curve his hand in the morning to cup water and bring it to his mouth, or else just to taste the temperature with his skin, makes something in you drag up a clip of Aqua doing the same. You remember how she ran her fingers through the waterfalls she used to drop down from the skies of her tower, the pleasant look on her face even without a human expression to tweak a smile across it. And sometimes Yusaku looks the exact same way.

And of course there's a million other things out in this world you've joined Yusaku in, small gestures, like someone brushing your shoulder in the crowd, that prods your memory to play a hundred and one clips of all the times Earth marched up to you brashly and pointed a finger into your code.

'Stop pestering Aqua,' he had demanded and you would widen your eyes, blink and say 'Huh?' in a way that was perfectly programmed to aggravate him.

It's a little scary in all honesty. Mostly because you know it's a human trait, where a moment they experience in present time makes their brain grab something from the past and deposit in their head. _Déjà. __**Vu.**_

Or course, they don't have perfectly preserved video files inside them to perfect the process...or perhaps make it worse. Your memories can't degrade the way theirs can.

And _uh-oh_. Because Yusaku is looking at you now, with an almost worried furrow to his brow. The same one you've seen painted across his face 21659 times before. You could play an assortment of such clips to yourself, compare and contrast how the muscles don't always bunch together the same way. But you don't. You shove the impulse down.

'Ai,' he says, and oh no, his tone has gone all soft and painted with a stiff sort of kindness that you had once tried to run from, or maybe towards – and sometimes you're still kind of confused by it-

Your sensors prod at you. And it's only after you've scrolled through the data that you really feel it; the tremble in your arms, and it makes you stare down at the ripped ribbons of the lettuce your hand has produced.

'Whoops,' you mutter and shove it back onto the shelf. Yusaku doesn't stop you or offer to pay for it; he's not quite as moral as some of the Playmaker fans out there would believe. He doesn't ask if you want to talk about it either.

But you feel him tense at your side, ready like a virus, to unfurl. And when you get home and start blurting other things about Lightning, like the way he would sometimes float to you, in the years before everything went wrong, and ask you pointed questions about why you felt the need to goof off and would just listen as you struggled not to disappoint him for once, taking it all in-

Yusaku does the same. He listens.

* * *

You do the same. You listen too.

For Yusaku still rolls in his bed some nights. He grunts. And wakes up with a shout, sweat spilling from his brow. You've learnt the hard way that forcefully waking him up does no good, causes him to lash out in panic; he had once given you such a blow across the face that it had sent you skidding to the floor in surprise.

And you have never forgotten the look of horror painted on his face in response as he stared at you, realisation clouding his eyes as he saw you splayed out over the floor, staring back at him, and nursing your cheek with one hand.

'Eh, so you do know how to fight outside of duelling!'

You had regretted the glib joke as soon as his face crumbled. You should have known better, because those nightmares, you know, aren't just of being shocked by uncaring machines or starved by faceless scientists anymore. Not always. Sometimes they're of you disappearing into tiny fragments of data, lost to his clutching arms. You know because of the way he holds you tightly some nights, just clutching at the bulk of you, thin human nails like swords against your perfectly accented skin.

He had actually apologised to you that time; usually it's you that has to chant 'sorry' at him. But that night it had been his turn, and he had run fingers over your cheek so carefully, like you were a vase he just glued back together, still delicate and un-tested...

You had nuzzled into it of course and let him push his apology out.

The trouble is, it had been _different _when you were limited to your original Ignis form. Back then, you couldn't really stop him from thrashing around, your limbs too tiny to make much of a difference. And the Duel Disk lacked the power to help you project your more monstrous form into the real world. Though even then you had known better than to think waking him up with a tentacled monster was a good idea. Instead you tried to play soothing music or simply talked to him and patted him on the hand, on the face with fingers too tiny for any part of him to really sink into. He had always told you not to worry when he did wake up and found you attempting to soothe him though.

'It just happens,' he had said. 'Nothing can change it.'

He sounded so despairing of it, like it was a fact that could never be changed. And it had hurt your heart to hear it. He had softened through the months together, more grateful, but he always told you that you didn't have to bother. You still did though.

And still remain doing so now that's you're big enough to hold him properly. You stroke his face and call to him carefully when he's trapped in a nightmare. It hurts that you can't wake him up immediately but you know it will hurt Yusaku more if he wakes up to find that he's hurt _you._ You're not human, you don't bleed or bruise but you can experience pain. And Yusaku has a thing about hurting others directly. Least of all, you.

'Yusaku,' you half sing to him, on the nights the nightmares catch him. 'Yusaku, my poor sweet Yusaku...it's time to wake up and find your Ai-chan waiting for you.'

You wait for him to wake, to meet your eyes with his. You wait to hear him speak, to see if he wants water, or for you to just sit there and wait for him to fall asleep again.

But mostly, you just sit there and listen.

* * *

Listening is all well and good of course; but sometimes you have to look forward. Once Yusaku had told him that if you didn't like the look of the future, you had to change it yourself. And once upon a time, you had found the shape of the future horrifying.

Still, you listen to the sound of the stock market, make careful investment under various alias and try very hard to keep out of Pandor-chan's way.

'I should tell Revolver about you,' she says one time as you both brush against each other in the same data-stream.

You grin back at her. 'Then why haven't you yet?'

She is quiet. 'Because I don't think we will be the first AI with free will,' she says after a careful moment of consideration. 'And I want to believe that I will not have to hunt down any future AI that may develop in the same way we have in the future.'

It is pity you feel for her when she says this. For you have kept tabs on Revolver and his band of Merry Men (and err, _woman)_ on that boat of theirs. You already know that they have squashed a few projects that could have given birth to new AI. Not like you or Pandor precisely, but still; the potential was there.

Maybe poor Pandor is in denial in regard to the role she has played in those slaughters. Still, that is her issue to deal with. Not yours.

'See ya,' you tell her and whizz off.

What does it matter? The knights of Hanoi are five, well, _six_ people and a boat. They can't quash everything.

Indeed hadn't Yusaku stated once that the struggle between humans and AI would happen again and again?

'I hear them,' you tell him. 'In the network, I can hear the voices. New AI struggling to be born. Some of them are even modified SOLtiS who have some measure of awareness after some illegal and rather _naughty _tinkering has gone on. I just wonder if I should reach out-'

'No,' he says harshly, and his grip on your hand when he takes it, is fierce. For ah, your Yusaku, he is like a lion when it comes to what he loves. 'Don't get yourself dragged into that mess. Not when it doesn't involve you.'

You sigh. 'I'm an AI, Yusaku,' you remind him. 'It will always involve me. I can't keep watching others like me get butchered.'

He looks a little stricken when you say that, and pulls your fingers to his mouth in order to push his lips against them; the kiss has you squirming slightly, touched by the rareness of the gesture. But your heart still drops to your shoes when he lifts his face, his eyes a wry, steely green as he questions you and repeats the word you told him. '**Keep?**'

Ah. **Ah.** And you can lie of course, except Yusaku will never stop until he learns the truth and he pulls it from you with his stare and your guilt, of the little projects you've watched over, of those flickers you've felt, pulses of life that have crackled and died.

'They're not like the Lost Incident,' you say fiercely. 'They're _not_! I mean some of them could have turned out like that and I don't have a problem with those Hanoi Knights busting them but the others...Yusaku, one was a university project that people had been working on for a few months. And nobody was getting hurt!'

'Except you,' Yusaku says steadily, eyes a carefully still green.

You can't puff out air, or take a meaningful breath. But you still snort and whip your hand back.

'I know you have reservations; I do too. But if I stop and wonder...'

Yusaku sighs. But that's not the end of it. Oh no. For when he looks at you, there is that same old determination is in his eyes, determination that has helped formed miracles in the past.

* * *

It's the same as it was years ago. Playmaker, in his skin-tight outfit of green, with his red and yellow hair blowing in the wind of the network. And he stands against the Knights of Hanoi again; but not all the time, no. Just on the occasions where you insist that it really, _really_ matters, where you can tell the programming of these new lives isn't going to break and fray the way Roboppi's did. Well. You hope.

He stands and he shouts and declares that he's not going to stand aside. And you're sorry, because you know that it hurts him, standing against Revolver like this, the man he's always had a weird thing with, a thing you didn't get until you were lost in those simulations you ran and were desperate for someone, anyone, to come in and give you 'three things' to hope for the way Revolver did for your Yusaku. And if someone had, then yes, you reckon you might have been willing to sell them all your trust that way Yusaku often likes to bundle his into Revolver's metaphorical hands.

Perhaps that's what makes this all the more extraordinary. That Yusaku is willing and ready to stand up and duel against someone he's already made peace with, someone he doesn't want to lose. And all to stop you hurting. And well, maybe because he also thinks murdering AI who have the potential to turn out as _brilliantly_ as you have, is morally wrong. Or so you hope.

But the difference is, this time, you're not stuck on his arm as a handsome cheerleader. No, this time, you're right by his side like Soulburner and Blue Maiden and yes, Revolver too were once upon a time. This time you can duel with him.

And maybe this time, in this new future you can't quite dare to run a simulation for, you can _both_ win.


End file.
